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Monday, July 10, 2017

`Books Which He Would Regret Never'

I
have just read the biography of a man whose name I had never heard before – Everette Lee DeGolyer (1886-1956), “the founder of applied geophysics in the petroleum
industry.” The book is Lon Tinkle’s Mr.
De: A Biography of Everette Lee DeGolyer (Little, Brown and Co., 1970). He
was, in short, that much-parodied and misunderstood species, a Texas oilman.
Tinkle clearly admires his subject and reveals him as an enormously contradictory
and cultured American hero. In a late chapter, “A Writing Man,” Tinkle reports
that DeGolyer wrote book reviews and stories for the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas
Times Herald. The book editor of the Times
Herald asked him to compile “a list, with commentary, of the ten best books
he had ever read.” Tinkle goes on: “DeGolyer demurred at such a conventional
column and offered instead to discuss a short list of great, though little
known, books which he would regret never having encountered.” One admires
DeGolyer for rebuffing the editorial banality. Here is Tinkle’s rundown of
DeGolyer’s picks, only two of which I have read:

“Inevitably,
the list of ten books that `he would hate to have missed’ opens with what was
possibly his favorite work, Andrew D. White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.
The list continues: 2) Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World—Antarctic, 1910-1913; 3) René Vallery-Radot,
The Life of Pasteur; 4) Edward
Stucken, The Great White Gods; 5) Elaine
Sanceau, The Life of Prester John; 6)
E.A. McIlhenny, The Alligator’s Life
History; 7) John G. Neihardt, Black
Elk Speaks; 8) George Webb Desant, The
Story of Burnt Njals (from the Icelandic of the Njalas saga); 9) Eduardo
Zamacois, Roots; 10) Honore Wilson
Morrow, Beyond the Blue Sierra.”